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]]>Jenise FryattSmarter Shift Hands #ContentChat Over to Lucy Rendler-Kaplanhttp://smartershift.com/2016/01/smarter-shift-hands-contentchat-lucy-rendler-kaplan/
Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:37:12 +0000http://smartershift.com/?p=7581It is with mixed emotions that we at Smarter Shift announce we are stepping away from our popular Twitter chat about content marketing, #ContentChat. We're handing the reigns to Lucy Rendler-Kaplan, who will continue on as solo moderator.

Three years ago Smarter Shift President and friend Mitchell Beer engaged me as the company's content marketing strategist to create a chat that would bring together members of the content marketing community for thoughtful discussions and shared education about our profession.

Like so many great content marketing tactics, we saw this as a win/win for everyone: it contributed to the community, while helping us to keep abreast of the latest tools and methods in a rapidly evolving field.

In the beginning...

We began with a modest but passionate group of chatters. Often in those first months, only a handful of people joined the chat. But those folks brought a lot to the table and quickly made #contentchat a regular part of their weekly routine.

Life started to get in the way a little for me this past year, and when I found I needed some help I asked loyal community member Lorrie Guerrieri to act as regular co-moderator for the chat. Lorrie helped me find guests and handled the chat on her own when I couldn't be there. In June, Lorrie's work began to prevent her from attending the chat, so she recommended regular community member Lucy Rendler-Kaplan to moderate in my absence.

Lucy was a brilliant choice. Over the past year, she and Lorrie both brought new excitement to the chat. Participation grew so much that the weekly discussion began to regularly trend on Twitter.

A shift in focus

Now Smarter Shift is honing its focus more sharply on the content curation arm of our business, and on climate and energy communication. Continuing to host a wildly popular content marketing chat falls a little bit outside that focus.

We are thrilled that Lucy Rendler-Kaplan has agreed to continue the chat. The community remains strong and provides needed help and education to those interested in learning about content marketing.

I would personally like to thank my friend Mitchell Beer for giving me the opportunity to create and host this amazing Twitter chat. It has been fun and so educational. May all content marketing pros have the privilege of working with clients like Mitchell: folks who have the vision, trust, and confidence to support their efforts.

I would also like to thank the #contentchat community for its loyalty, warmth, generosity, and never-ending passion. You all have inspired me beyond words. May you all continue to receive as much from your interaction with each other, as I have received from knowing you.

Our archived #contentchat summaries will continue to be available here.

This week #contentchat hosted Brian Honigman, of Honigman Media, who shared his tips for determining topics to cover in your content marketing.

Brian is the CEO of Honigman Media, a content marketing consultancy that provides strategy on content distribution and content production services to clients like the Weather Company, Reuters, People Magazine, and others. As a content marketing and social media consultant, Brian is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Forbes,Entrepreneur, and others.

With more than 80 participants on this fast-paced chat, the discussion featured an abundance of value-packed nuggets of wisdom. Brian, himself, shared the most tweets covering everything from new ideas for digging up important information about customers to how to determine if your content is actually resonating with your audience.

This week #contentchat welcomed social media strategist and podcaster Chris Barrows to share his expertise on the topic of "Building Community via Podcasting."

Barrows, chair of the eduWeb Digital Summit (@eduwebconf) and host of the Why I Social Podcast (@WhyISocial) talked about why podcasting has become so popular; how podcasting compares to social media as a community building tool: and how podcasting can be part of a successful digital marketing strategy.

As usual, our community of content marketing pros were on hand to share their tips and insights. You can read our summary of the chat, below.

This week on #contentchat Aaron Kilby of Artisan Colour and the popular Twitter chat, #MediaChat, stopped by to share his tips on growing social media accounts organically.

Growing your social media accounts one relationship at a time is a lot more time consuming than paid methods. But for marketers who understand the value of this kind of organic growth, the rewards are many, as noted by Aaron and the rest of our community of professional content marketers.

You can read our summary of this fast-paced chat (#contentchat trending on Twitter once again) below.

When it comes to content creation for digital marketing, it's difficult to find creators with the wealth of experience and customer knowledge that employees display each day at work.

They know how your products work; how to troubleshoot common problems; the most frequent customer complaints and how to manage them. Thus, tapping these treasure troves of valuable information for your content marketing just makes sense.

But just how is this done?

This week we asked Kathi Kruse, of Kruse Control Inc., to share her considerable experience regarding “Employee Participation in Content Creation.”

Kathi is a social media strategist, marketing and online reputation consultant, trainer, blogger, speaker and author.

This week on #ContentChat, social media coach Madalyn Sklar dropped in to share her wisdom on the topic of "How to Start Your Own Popular Podcast."

Madalyn Sklar

As a social media coach and consultant helping countless entrepreneurs, startups and businesses of all sizes to "work smarter not harder," Madalyn’s eagerness to share her knowledge is on display on her #TwitterSmarter podcast where she interviews top social media and marketing experts like Pat Flynn, Kim Garst, Brian Fanzo, Mark Schaefer and Mari Smith.

Madalyn also runs the popular #TwitterSmarter Twitter chat every Thursday at 12noon.

During our time with Madalyn, she addressed what makes a podcast popular and how to get started. She also outlined some popular podcast formats. In addition, our brilliant community of content marketers chimed in with their own tips and questions.

At a time when live streaming video chats are gaining in popularity, Blab is the latest to take the digital marketing world by storm.

Blab hosts can invite people to join the discussion and four video images can be viewed at one time. With a text feature that offers an unlimited number of viewers the chance to engage, as well as the ability to record both mp3 audio and mp4 video, there are many ways that marketers can take advantage of the application to build online communities.

This week Vincent Orleck, Social Media Manager for the health and wellness company Plexus Worldwide, joined #contentchat to share his knowledge of Blab.

Anyone who uses social media for marketing knows that fan content is marketing gold.

It can greatly increase brand reach and lend authenticity to your marketing that creates lead-building trust and brand loyalty.

However, that value is greatly diminished when we don't find, capture and make good use of fan content as part of a solid marketing strategy.

This week on #contentchat, we asked Pixlee Marketing Manager Juliet Carnoy to help us dig into how to make the best use fan content for content marketing. Pixlee is a visual marketing platform that helps brands to market and sell with real customer photos and videos.